


One Single Sunlit Day More

by feverishsea



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverishsea/pseuds/feverishsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The road goes ever on, my boy. May it take you far away from here.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Single Sunlit Day More

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I have a tumblr now; idk. http://seatsreservedforheroes.tumblr.com/

The war is over, and everything looks different now. Legolas is old enough to remember not just a time before the threat of war, but true war before it… And yet, nothing has ever felt so foreign to him as traveling slowly toward Rivendell with Gimli at his side, rather than as a heavy warmth against his back. They’ve no need for mad haste; they can take their time and do things comfortably.

Legolas was comfortable enough with Gimli’s arms round his waist, but he knows better than to entertain that notion, even in the privacy of his own mind.

“What yer bother, lad? Ye look a million miles away,” Gimli says between puffs of smoke that curl into the fire they’ve built between them. There’s always something between them now, and Legolas doesn’t know what to do with the fact that this thought has occurred to him.

He turns his head and tilts a smile at the dwarf through wisps of flame. Legolas grasps at the way he used to see his companion - short and fat and hairy - but all he can see now is Gimli, and that name is dear to him.

“Ah, it’s nothing. I was… I was admiring the starlight.” Gimli is always happy to believe that Legolas is frittering away his time chasing clouds.

Tonight, though, Gimli quirks a thick eyebrow at him and lifts his chin to look up at the sky. Legolas follows his gaze.

Damn. The sky is pitch-black with cloud cover for miles.

Legolas scrambles to his feet and moves away from the fire. “I’m for bed,” he says.

He ignores it when Gimli yells, “Ye don’t sleep!” behind him.

***

Lord Elrond, fair and ancient and wise, coughs delicately at his shoulder. When that does not provoke a response, he coughs again. Much like Legolas himself, Elrond has always struggled with the subtlety that is supposed to be native to their race.

Legolas closes his eyes and tightens his hold on the bannister overlooking one of Rivendell’s gardens. Lord Elrond may be older and wiser than Legolas’s own father, but he’s just as interfering.

“I can’t help noticing that you seem…” Elrond starts to say.

Legolas whirls around and scans the room frantically. All he sees are elves; elves singing and laughing and reciting poetry and speaking together. It should probably horrify him more than it does when Legolas realizes he no longer feels like he can speak to his own kin, but it’s just a dull ache in his breast. What did elves know of him, anymore? What did anyone know?

In the corner, Legolas spots a curly brown mop of shaggy hair, and his heart lifts.

“My apologies, Lord Elrond, but I’ve promised Master Baggins a word,” he says, and sweeps off before Elrond can say anything else.

Now that he’s committed, Legolas can hardly do anything but walk over and sink down into a seat next to the old hobbit, who looks like he’s nodded off.

“Good evening, Master Baggins,” he says with a smile, and the hobbit jolts awake.

“Ah! Hello! Why, hello there!” Brown eyes flutter and squint at him. “You… oh, right! You’re the elf that rode in here with a dwarf, are you not? There’s been some tongues wagging about that, I could tell you.”

Legolas feels his smile fade. The hobbit stares at him with eyes that suddenly seem keen for all their age and says more gently, “…But perhaps I shouldn’t, eh? Perhaps I’ve let my tongue run away with me again.”

“It’s nothing, Master Baggins,” Legolas says.

“Call me Bilbo,” the hobbit waves the pleasantries away. “I apologize if I overstepped. It’s just, it didn’t seem to me like an elf with the gumption to ride to Rivendell in the company of only a dwarf would care what any of the elves here thought of him.”

It’s nice to hear some sort of praise, odd as this bit of it may be. It seems like it’s been a long time since Legolas knew he did anything right.

“I’m not sure I do care what they think,” he admits. “But I…”

He cuts himself off and looks down, at the gray robes that cover his lap. They were left in his room and he put them on not because his clothes from the road were dirty (though perhaps they were), but because this is what he’s always done. Because it’s what he was expected to do.

Perhaps it’s time he stops doing that.

When he looks up again, Bilbo is staring at him with that keen-eyed expression again.

“You young heroes are the ones that destroyed that old ring, but I’m the one who found it,” he says.

“I know. I remember when you told the Council about it,” Legolas reminds him gently.

Bilbo shakes his head, and a creased smile makes its way across his weathered face.

“Ah, that’s true, but we spoke of rings and pitiful creatures that day. Not of dwarves.”

He stops, and Legolas doesn’t know whether he hopes Bilbo will stop for good, or continue.

Bilbo looks down and seems to struggle with himself for a minute before looking back up. There’s a weariness, a sadness to his face that Legolas would swear was not there a moment ago. He’s bewildered by these mercurial shifts. Legolas cannot simply pick up a mood and let it go so lightly.

“What do you know of Thorin Oakenshield?” Bilbo asks, his voice very quiet. Legolas can’t swear to why, but he knows intuitively that this is very, very important.

“I… He… He was the son of Thrain, son of Thrall. King Under the Mountain. He claimed his home of Erebor for his people and shortly after died a hero.” Legolas has heard less flattering things, but he guesses after his own time spent in the company of dwarves that Bilbo would not like to hear these things. Dwarves have a way of wearing on you, like stone.

Bilbo is shaking his head and smiling.

“Ah, so you know who he was, but nothing of what he was. He…” Bilbo pauses again, and then folds his hands in his lap. He looks down. “I am sorry. It has been a very long time, and perhaps it should be easier to say these things, but I find it is not. Nothing about Thorin was ever easy.”

“It’s all right,” Legolas says, confused and uncertain of his footing.

Bilbo shakes his head again. He looks sad. “It is not, in truth. My whole life since I have told the tales of my journey, but I have spoken so little of Thorin, and now almost none remain who remember him. I fear that I have doomed his memory to oblivion, because I held it too close all these years.”

The pain in his voice is almost tangible, and Legolas has always had a soft heart. He feels at once profound sadness, and a terrible sort of gratitude that his voice does not yet sound like Bilbo’s.

“If you wish to tell me, I promise that I will not forget,” Legolas says. He pretends not to see the tears that gather in Bilbo’s eyes. He grasps for words; any words.

“Was your dwarf as stubborn as mine?” Legolas says without thinking.

Three different elves stop singing. A plate crashes to the floor in the back. Legolas curses himself for ten different kinds of fool; after so long in the company of mortals, he has forgotten the keen ears of his kin.

There is nothing for it now; nothing to do but look at Bilbo when he chuckles and says, “There’s none more stubborn than a dwarf, it’s true, but I’ve never met man nor beast as could match the likes of Thorin. That’s not praise, mind you; it was dreadful. He was a terrible king, if we’re being quite honest. He was very good at the battle bits, and inspiring us to jump off cliffs and other mad things, but he’d no head for negotiation or compromise.”

“I… er… Have never heard that before.” Which is actually true, oddly enough. Perhaps it would have been too much like self-reflection for Thranduil to criticize that.

Bilbo snorts. “Of course you haven’t! Everyone was in awe of him. It was a bit hard not to be, with the… well… hair. And the standing. He just - he had a way of - he was a bit like the bloody dragon, to be honest. Larger than life, if you know how I mean it. Couldn’t help but look at him if he was in the room.”

Legolas thinks that he might know what Bilbo means. He also knows it doesn’t apply to his situation at all. Not that he’d want Gimli to be some stoic wind-tossed king. He doesn’t want anything about Gimli to change. He likes Gimli the way he is, with his foolish pipe and gruff chuckles and the way his voice rolls over burrs when he tells a story.

“He sounds impressive,” Legolas says. “And did he… did he find you - that is - I mean…”

The old hobbits eyes go soft and watery again, and his voice sounds choked when he whispers, “Nobody remembers that Thorin went mad before he - before. None of the bards want to sing about a king who made stupid, selfish choices that nearly killed his people, and the ones nearby besides. Nobody tells tales of a dwarf who deserved his tragedy.”

Legolas blinks away his surprise. “You’ll have to forgive me saying so, but that sounds rather less fond than I’d expected.”

Bilbo gives a weak chuckle and rubs a shaking hand over his face.

“Ah, but none of that really matters, does it?”

“Does it not?”

Bilbo shakes his head. “Many a time I wished it did, believe me. But I find it does not, not even now. I wasn’t - we don’t care for heroic actions, do we? We care for lads and lasses. I told myself over and over again of all the terrible, foolish things Thorin did, and yet.”

He raises his head and Legolas thinks that he does not see simply the other side of the hall when he gazes over the table and says, “I remember - even now! What an old fool I am - I remember his eyes; blue as would pierce right through you when he was angry, and so soft you’d want to run right up to his arms when he was pleased. He used to laugh at his nephews like nothing else, but he never seemed to care to laugh too much. He was always trying to stifle it, or bite it away. Thorin liked to be useful, is what he liked. Wanted to know he was doing what he ought to. Whenever I struggled at some silly task I’d find him by my shoulder, and we’d spend hours sharpening blades or mending leather or tending ponies.”

“It sounds like he spent rather a lot of time with you,” Legolas says, and when Bilbo smiles, for a second he sees the shadow of a much younger hobbit, one untested and eager, with only laugh lines on his face.

“Ach, no, there was no time for foolish fancies on the road,” Bilbo scoffs, but Legolas thinks he is lying. Here, so long past the end of this story, he finds himself hoping that Bilbo is lying; hoping that a doomed hero and a naive hobbit snatched some sort of short-lived happiness where they could.

“How do you…” The weight of this story, of the things that Bilbo is telling him, crashes down on his head, and Legolas suddenly finds it difficult to breathe. He cannot finish but it doesn’t matter; Bilbo seems to understand.

The old hobbit sighs and twitches his hairy feet. “Even when the worst comes - the very worst that you can possibly imagine; seeing a glimpse of what might have been and watching it crumble without a chance to try for it - you still go on living, my boy. Nobody asked me what I wanted, after all. And there are things past grief; good things, very good things.”

Bilbo pauses and shuts his eyes for a moment. “But if you are asking me whether I’d trade all these long years and the joys I’ve found for one single sunlit day more in his company, then yes. The answer is yes.”

Legolas’s throat is tight. He stands up abruptly, then sits back down. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to - ”

“No, no.” Bilbo smiles at him, a true smile, one full of understanding. He waves at Legolas and yawns. “Off with you. The road goes ever on, my boy. May it take you far away from here.”

***

“I never thought it possible to be a bigger fool than my daughter,” Elrond says as Legolas strides by him in the hall. He sounds more sad than angry. Legolas doesn’t slow.

He skids to a stop in front of the door next to his and pounds on it.

“Alright, keep yer shirt on!” he hears from inside. The door wrenches open and Gimli is standing there, short and strong and dear. Legolas doesn’t have a way to control the emotions crashing around his chest. He doesn’t know how mortals do this.

Gimli looks at him and the dwarf’s face goes from irritated to angry in the blink of an eye. Angry is how dwarves show concern.

“Are ye alright, laddie? What happened?” When Legolas doesn’t respond, Gimli lunges forward and grabs Legolas’s arm to pull him in the room. “Ye look dreadful, what - ”

The questions are cut off when Legolas sinks to his knees and wraps his arms around Gimli’s stout frame.

“I want you to stay with me,” Legolas blurts out so quickly that he has to think to make sure he hasn’t lapsed into his native tongue. “I do not want us to travel, and then part someday as friends. I do not want us to part at all. I could not bear it.”

The seconds tick by, and then Gimli whispers, “Are ye sure ye know what ye’re doin’, laddie? Because I’ve no intent to be parted from ye, but I’d never figured to say it out loud, like.”

Legolas refuses to let go, and Gimli isn’t pushing him away, so he counts this as a win. “Perhaps life is too short not to say these things out loud.”

There’s an odd note in Gimli’s voice when he raises a hesitating hand and pushes his thick fingers through Legolas’s hair. The fine strands snag and snap on the dwarf’s calluses. “Even for an elf?”

Legolas pushes his head into Gimli’s grasp like a cat begging for affection. He thinks of orcs and arrows, and of an hourglass trickling away three hundred years, one second at a time. “Especially for an elf.”

Silence stretches out, and Legolas twists his neck to look up at Gimli, who is staring down at him with an expression he can’t read. He wants to push at the beard on Gimli’s face to see if that makes things clearer. He daren’t, right now. Perhaps some day he will.

Gimli’s hand runs over his hair again and then cups the back of his neck. Legolas leans into the touch again as the dwarf says, devastatingly gentle, “I don’t think I can love ye enough in one lifetime to make up for leaving ye alone the rest of yours, lad.”

At some point he must have cared about dignity, Legolas thinks muzzily as he throws himself forward to bury his face in Gimli’s neck. He thinks he’s allowed this; he’s past caring. “I think you’re wrong,” he mumbles into skin and hair. “And… and the road goes on. Perhaps there are other places that we could reach, someday.”

Gimli says nothing to that; just draws his short arms around Legolas’s slim frame and pulls the elf in close.

He may be wrong, and both of them are undeniably fools, but Legolas is willing to stake his soul on a bad bet.

The alternative, after all, is so very much worse.


End file.
